I am angry. I am angry and resentful. I am angry and defensive and resentful and men do not find that attractive. The worst part is, I did not even know that until I read it in a FOX news story called “The War on Men” written by Suzanne Venker, niece of and frequent collaborator with Phyllis Schlafly. This story has been very popular on the site for many days because it explains so much, so many dynamics that Schlafly tried to make us understand during the course of her long and patient career but which apparently are even more true today…

Unfortunately, Venker is somewhat enigmatic about how to reverse this problem, beyond a few vague clues. Women, she says, “have the power to turn everything around” (Duh, of course, we have ALL the power). “All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.” Surrender to my femininity. Surrender to my femininity. I get the general idea but what does it mean, like, in practice? Not wear pants so much? Let my hair grow. Ask my boss to pay me a little less? Open to ideas.

Mostly I think women should stop making their husbands dress up in cowboy costumes and satisfying their depraved desires and doing all the household chores and spanking them in front of their girlfriends when they don’t get them finished in time, and always stealing all the chocolate in the house and not letting their husbands have any. Amirite?

…or is it just me? It’s just me isn’t it? Damn.

eric

Great response. Curse you, Rosin, for making me put another book on my already too long ‘to read’ list.

magistramarla

Marcus,

LOL – I wanna be one of your wife’s girlfriends!

CSB

I’d argue that there is a war on men, but that it’s largely the same war as the one on women — the whole “get back in the kitchen and make me a sammich” ideal of what femininity should mean implies that men cannot and should not act in such a way…that caring about their children or helping around the house isn’t masculine enough. It’s really a matter of patriarchy harming everyone involved.

Somehow, though, I doubt that’s the sort of thing Venker is talking about.

CSB

And I really should have used a semicolon or two in that first sentence. I blame the War on Punctuation.

http://noadi.etsy.com Noadi

@marcus Sounds like a perfectly delightful evening to me!

http://www.pandasthumb.org Area Man

“by Suzanne Venker, Phyllis Schlafly’s niece…”

Good god, but has that woman ever polluted the gene pool. Two idiot sons and now this. We desperately need to come up with a Schlafly biomarker so that the public can have advanced warning before inadvertently breeding with one.

scienceavenger

Surrender to my femininity. Surrender to my femininity. I get the general idea but what does it mean, like, in practice? Not wear pants so much? Let my hair grow. Ask my boss to pay me a little less? Open to ideas.

Clearly Venker means have more sex with the men in your life…and tighter pants please…

Well, it was worth a shot.

http://drx.typepad.com Dr X

She should go work in a factory making clothes for around $15 a week, like my grandmother did in the 1920s. It was the old days, when women were women, but they weren’t quite as womanly as the women who came 20 years before my grandmother, when the wages were less, there were no break rules and the employers locked their ultra-feminine charges into the factory during the day so that they would leap out windows, to their deaths, or burn alive when fire broke out.

Today it’s getting so that real men aren’t even allowed to set a woman’s hair on fire without lefties and feminazis screaming sexism.

http://composer99.blogspot.ca composer99

Well played, Dr X. Well played.

=8)-DX

“Not wear pants so much?” My girlfriend has a habit of not wearing trousers around the house too. It seems more of an assertive behaviour to me though.. is that feminine?

bradleybetts

Honestly? I’m ok with women not wearing pants. Ever.

(Glad I thought of this before I hit send; I’m English. Pants = underwear).

sailor1031

“…surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.”

I discussed this topic with my wife a long time ago. She said I can surrender to my femininity at home when we’re alone but not when friends come over or when I go out.

dingojack

Is a plain, bleached, ladies hanky* the appropriate thing to waive when surrendering to one’s femininity?

I wouldn’t want to make a faux pas!

Dingo

—–

* perhaps the one with a nice pink lace border

frankniddy

As usual, the comments are painfully idiotic.

“say what you will, Phyllis Schlafly is pretty cool. Nigh near perfection in a real man’s mind – if you’re a woman and don’t like her, I’m really really sorry for whatever poor guy ends up with you. Not sorry for him necessarily because he’s with you, but because something terrible happened in his life that led him down the path of ending up with you, know what I mean?”

Or

“This is STILL really freaking out the feminists. They just hate when men get messages they don’t control.

“Venker’s Fox News opinion piece titled “The War on Men” is an insulting and misogynistic diatribe that claims if only women knew their role as subservient, second-class citizens, we’d have more well-behaved, respectful men wanting to get married.”

Well, not exactly. But some slight modifications would certainly help their case for landing commitment. They can start by cutting back on their promiscuity.”

bobo

#12 trousers are a pain in the ass. literally. and a bra is annoying. around the house is the time to wear loungewear!